UNHCR and host countries seek more help to cope with Syria refugee crisis

UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres with some of the ministers from host countries visits a school near Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan.

AMMAN, Jordan, May 5 (UNHCR) – The UN refugee agency has joined the main host countries for Syrian refugees in calling on the international community to significantly step up efforts to address the growing human impact of the Syria crisis.

This latest appeal for the burden to be shared followed a meeting on Sunday in Jordan's Za'atari refugee camp chaired by Jordan's Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh and UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres, and attended by top officials from Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and Egypt.

Together, the five countries represented at the meeting are host to around 3 million Syrian refugees. The influx of refugees since the crisis started in 2011 has put a huge strain on their budgets and infrastructure, stretching services such as health and education to breaking point in some host communities.

"The humanitarian spill-over of the crisis in Syria has resulted in severe burdens for the countries sitting around this table," Judeh said. "We call on the international community to step up to the challenge and be more active and forthcoming in burden sharing."

In a communiqué issued after the meeting, Guterres and the ministers called on other nations to increase their financial and development assistance to host countries, and to keep their borders open to Syrians seeking protection.

"The truth is that the international support to the governments and the host communities has been minimal in relation to the needs," Guterres said. "Due to the protracted character of this crisis, this support needs to massively increase in the months to come."

To date, only 25 per cent of the funding requested under the UN's 2014 Syria Regional Response Plan has materialized, and direct financial support to the host countries is also below the level required. As a result, host communities are struggling to maintain basic public services in some areas due to the extra demand created by the presence of so many Syrian refugees.

After the meeting, Guterres and the ministers travelled to a school in nearby Mafraq where they met Syrian pupils attending lessons alongside Jordanian children in packed classrooms.

In total there are more than 120,000 Syrian pupils currently enrolled in Jordan's schools, with thousands more entering the system each term.

They also visited the maternity ward of a Mafraq hospital that handles some of the births by Syrian women at the Za'atari camp. More than 3,000 children have been born in exile to mothers at the camp since it opened nearly two years ago.

While underlining the need for greater international assistance for refugees and host countries, Guterres said the only lasting solution to the crisis was an end to the conflict inside Syria. "It is clear that there is no humanitarian solution for this crisis, the solution is political," he said. "There is also no military solution. This is a war in which nobody is winning and everybody is losing."

2008 Nansen Refugee Award

The UN refugee agency has named the British coordinator of a UN-run mine clearance programme in southern Lebanon and his civilian staff, including almost 1,000 Lebanese mine clearers, as the winners of the 2008 Nansen Refugee Award.

Christopher Clark, a former officer with the British armed forces, became manager of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre-South Lebanon (UNMACC-SL) n 2003. His teams have detected and destroyed tons of unexploded ordnance (UXO) and tens of thousands of mines. This includes almost 145,000 submunitions (bomblets from cluster-bombs) found in southern Lebanon since the five-week war of mid-2006.

Their work helped enable the return home of almost 1 million Lebanese uprooted by the conflict. But there has been a cost – 13 mine clearers have been killed, while a further 38 have suffered cluster-bomb injuries since 2006. Southern Lebanon is once more thriving with life and industry, while the process of reconstruction continues apace thanks, in large part, to the work of the 2008 Nansen Award winners.

2008 Nansen Refugee Award

Muazzez Ersoy

Muazzez Ersoy

Crisis in Iraq: Displacement

UNHCR and its partners estimate that out of a total population of 26 million, some 1.9 million Iraqis are currently displaced internally and more than 2 million others have fled to nearby countries. While many people were displaced before 2003, increasing numbers of Iraqis are now fleeing escalating sectarian, ethnic and general violence. Since January 2006, UNHCR estimates that more than 800,000 Iraqis have been uprooted and that 40,000 to 50,000 continue to flee their homes every month. UNHCR anticipates there will be approximately 2.3 million internally displaced people within Iraq by the end of 2007. The refugee agency and its partners have provided emergency assistance, shelter and legal aid to displaced Iraqis where security has allowed.

In January 2007, UNHCR launched an initial appeal for US$60 million to fund its Iraq programme. Despite security issues for humanitarian workers inside the country, UNHCR and partners hope to continue helping up to 250,000 of the most vulnerable internally displaced Iraqis and their host communities

Posted on 12 June 2007

Crisis in Iraq: Displacement

Jordan: Alaa's DAFI Scholarship

Alaa is a young Syrian refugee who is attending a Jordanian university close to Zaatari refugee camp thanks to a scholarship from UNHCR's DAFI program.
With demand outstripping the available scholarships through DAFI, more funding is needed to ensure bright young Syrians don't miss out on a university education.

Saving Diana: A Syrian Refugee With Special Needs

Ten year old Diana was born in Syria with a severe form of Cerebral Palsy. For nearly a month, she traveled with her mother and brother across deserts and sea in search of safety in Europe.

Turkey: Midyat refugees

Turkey is now the largest refugee-hosting country in the world with more than 2 million refugees on its soil. It has built a network of 24 camps to house more than a quarter of million refugees. One of those camp is Midyat.